Author: Camille Robinson

Permanence

Past Projects, Theatre

This was a show made by Samara Hersch and Gabby Rose with an ensemble of performers associated with Access Inc., an association working towards the empowerment of members of Melbourne’s Jewish community living with disabilities, and a group of professional performing artists. The piece is set in a world where things and people that are unneeded or unwanted begin to vanish, and tells the story of an archivist charged with destroying records of the disappeared who begins to be aware of what underlies this mysterious phenomenon. The narrative is described almost exclusively through movement and music.
The musical approach used a very small ensemble (2 performers to be exact) playing a range of instruments live, responding to and interacting with the show on stage, using a style reminiscent of early musical comedy with moments of French tinged jazz and persistent minimalism.
It was staged at Dancehouse, North Carlton as part of the 2010 Melbourne Fringe.

Patients

Dance, Past Projects

This was the most recent in a long succession of projects I’ve worked on with choreographer Caley O’Neill. The show was commissioned by St Michael’s Grammar School, a selection of whose students formed the dance ensemble, and staged at Gasworks theatre in September 2010. The underlying narrative of the piece is an interpretation of the story the Island of Dr Moreau (or Frankenstein, or the Golem etc. take your pick) set in a lab in which hybrid animal/people are brought to life and eventually revolt against their creators. The aesthetic of the show borrowed from early horror films of the 1930s mashed up with modern fashion and entomological illustrations, and the sound tries to draw together similar threads. The music composed is a series of intense but pared back electronic works whose underlying materials are sampled from early percussion recordings and sounds produced by insects, treading the territory between straight music and sound design I seem to keep coming back to with my electronic music.

Measure Island

Current Projects, Installation

This is the most complex project I’ve done for Museum Victoria to date, again commissioned by Ben Landau. The exhibit is an adaptation of one developed for Questacon (in Canberra) designed to allow children to explore practical applications of the concept of measurement in a fun, jungle themed setting. As part of the rethink of the exhibit the idea of making it a more immersive environment emerged, which is where I came in. My job was to create a sonic environment that evoked a cartoon jungle, with the condition that it would not send the poor people in the adjacent gift shop crazy from having to listen to something too repetitive. My strategy: create something fun and slightly over the top that incorporates a diverse range of animal sounds and a selection of stereotypical “jungle” drumbeats, which dynamically assembles itself out of a number of component bits. The delivery system was designed in Max/MSP, wherein a number of channels dedicated to classes of sounds (ambience, insects, monkeys, birds, etc.) randomly select from a given repertoire of samples, randomly setting volume, panning, and length of pause before the selection of a new sample and reset of all parameters, rendering an exact repetition of a convergence of sounds across the 6 channels nigh on impossible, and sounding rich, hyper-real, and fun. Make the trip to Spotswood and check it and the rest of Scienceworks’ fascinating bits out. Highly recommended for those with kids.

Measure Island at Scienceworks

West Africa

Current Projects, Installation

This was a very fun little gig for Ben Landau at Museum Victoria. The brief was to produce musical accompaniment for an exhibit of artefacts from the nations of western Africa using recordings from the Museum’s collections. In essence this meant listening to a bunch of CDs of traditional and contemporary West African music and making a compelling DJ mix that complemented the exhibit design and the objects and content on display. Pop into the Immigration Museum and have a look around and a listen.

West Africa: Rhythm & Spirit at the Immigration Museum

X

Film, Past Projects, Video

A little breakbeat blues number I knocked up to back this short promo entered in the 2011 Optus 180 contest. The premise of the contest: make a short promo for a proposed TV show, the winner gets funded for production by Optus. The premise of the proposed show: a reformed hacker is targeted by an identity thief, narrowly escapes arrest for offences committed in his name, and goes on the run entering into an underworld of organised electronic crime.
Big beats, big drama.

X from The Masters of Space & Time on Vimeo.

Permanence

Current Projects, Dance, Theatre

Much like my research this is another project that has been on the simmer for the better part of the year but has taken a while to be documented on here.

It’s a theatre/dance work made by theatre maker Samara Hersch and choreographer Gabby Rose, in collaboration with members of the Access Inc. performing arts group, and associate artists Caley O’Neill, Josh Ryan, Kyle Baxter and myself.

The themes of the work have been inspired by a couple of short stories by Peter Carey and other, mostly visual materials (Samara and Gabby do a much better job of explaining it than I, I’ll keep description to a minimum). The content has been developed by the makers and performers during much of 2010. Broadly speaking it’s about love, insecurity, and disappearing.

Access Inc. is an organisation which works to enrich the lives of Jewish people with disabilities; the members of Access working on Permanence have been inspiring to work with.

Permanence will be presented at Dancehouse in the week beginning October 4, 2010.

More details about the show will be provided closer to the season.